


a blue true dream of sky

by isilya



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Harlequin, M/M, Stargate Atlantis AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-01
Updated: 2005-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 10:06:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isilya/pseuds/isilya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheppard steps back and looks down at him. Water is pouring off the top of his Akubra hat like a little waterfall, so Rodney can’t see his expression.</p><p>“Fuck,” he says, tightly. “It was a stampede, McKay. Two thousand cattle took fright last night. We could barely tell our arses from our elbows. Come on, you can dry up in the caravan.”</p><p>Sheppard starts walking and Rodney hurries to keep up with him. The ground is rough and slimy under Rodney’s bare feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a blue true dream of sky

***

The dangers of the droving game remain. “This mob rushed at Atlantis the other night after tramping over an old sheet of tin hidden in the grass,” he says. “Away they went. We managed to head ‘em with a couple of dogs and a motorbike. But if 2000 head of cattle take fright and come towards you while you’re on a motorbike, they’ll go straight over you.” 

***

It’s like a nightmare.

Rodney dreams there’s a great thunderstorm rolling up over the plains. He’s wearing a bright yellow rain jacket and playing a violin. 

It’s not until he hears the shouting that he starts to wake up.

“Where’s McKay?” he hears someone yell, “Oh, that stupid git!”

The thunder doesn’t stay behind with his dream. The rumbling gets louder, it’s thunder and–more than thunder. He can feel vibrations through the ground. 

Rodney’s heart starts to race as he fumbles for his torch. His tent is small and claustrophobic–he’s deafened by the crashing of hooves striking dirt. The world is ending, the earth is shaking, his hands are trembling, and the fucking tent zip is _stuck_.

Stuck, even though Rodney is ripping at it, scrabbling frantically at the fabric, wriggling it up and down. 

He shouts for help, but he can’t even hear himself. 

Something rams him, hard. Rodney screams as a hoof rips through the flimsy nylon of the tent. He drops his torch and screams again as he’s crushed, as the light of his torch goes out and everything’s suddenly a blur. He can feel hot breath on his neck, horns, his sleeping bag. He dives out through the tear in the tent, hitting the ground, feet tangled. He’s keeled over in the dirt and cattle are running over him and around him and he thinks he’s going to die. For sure, he’s going to die and he curls up tight, burying his face in his arms. It starts to rain and Rodney pees his pants, and it all runs down into a little puddle around him.

It’s still raining when first light rolls around. Rodney must have passed out from sheer terror at some point in his pool of mud and sleeping bag. The first thing he hears is Sheppard singing, low and tuneless, over the rain. He opens his eyes. They feel gritty. His head throbs, his back hurts and then his elbow hurts more. Even his kidneys are sore, like something scored a direct hit. He’s shivering, and he can’t seem to catch his breath in anything more than great shuddering gasps. He sits up awkwardly and sees a deep gouge in the earth next to him, a deep hoof-shaped gouge. He shudders and turns aside to throw up.

“I’m singing in the rain,” he hears, when he stops retching. “Just singing in the rain! What a fucking beautiful day–”

“Sheppard,” Rodney manages to croak, before throwing up again. 

“Jesus, McKay,” Sheppard rushes over, sounding shocked. “What happened to you?”

“I was almost fucking killed last night,” Rodney spits out, struggling to get to his feet. Sheppard holds out a hand to help him up, but it’s wet and slippery and Rodney falls, lands on his arse. Sheppard shakes his head and hauls Rodney up. 

“Look at my tent!” All that’s left is a muddy mess of torn nylon. “And none of you even fucking bothered to–you’re _singing_ for God’s sake.”

“Hey, you’re bleeding.” Sheppard bats away Rodney’s defensive hands and wipes at Rodney’s forehead. “Are you hurt?”

Rodney swings his limbs, rolls his shoulders. His elbow still hurts but he can bend it.

“Everything hurts.”

“Jesus, I had no idea any of the cattle came out this far–”

“Somebody should have woken me up!”

Sheppard steps back and looks down at him. Water is pouring off the top of his Akubra hat like a little waterfall, so Rodney can’t see his expression.

“Fuck,” he says, tightly. “It was a stampede, McKay. Two thousand cattle took fright last night. We could barely tell our arses from our elbows. Come on, you can dry up in the caravan.”

Sheppard starts walking and Rodney hurries to keep up with him. The ground is rough and slimy under Rodney’s bare feet. 

“I heard Ronon out there–he couldn’t come and get me?” It’s getting harder to make himself heard over the rain, and he has to concentrate on where he’s putting his feet. 

Sheppard stops so suddenly Rodney bumps into him.

“Ronon,” Sheppard turns and says slowly, “was almost killed himself, last night. For an hour he was right in there, riding with the cattle, trying to calm them down. Teyla had to follow, and shoot all the cattle that fell and broke their legs. Had to put down the same bloody stupid cattle we’re trying to keep alive.”

Sheppard turns around and keeps walking.

“I–,” Rodney can remember the absolute terror in his gut. “I thought it was a nightmare.”

“No,” Sheppard says, as he unlocks the caravan door and lets them both inside. “It was a fucking dream.”

Sheppard takes off his hat and Rodney can see his broad smile.

“The drought is over. It’s raining,” he breathes, and makes it sound like Christmas.

***

Nowadays, Atlantis is little more than a tourist and truck stop, a footnote on Pegasus’s Route 66, someplace to stop between the Gulf and the outback.

***

“Absolutely not.” Sheppard almost laughed in McKay’s face the first time they met. 

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, Mr Sheppard.” 

“Fuck you,” Sheppard said turning away. He had a motorbike with a broken exhaust that needed looking at and two cows dropping calves and he was fucking exhausted.

“Mr Sheppard!” The guy ran after him, Sheppard could hear his yuppie sandals slapping on the dirt. “Mr Sheppard!”

Sheppard stopped.

“I heard you the first time, and my answer’s the same. You’re not coming on the road with us. We don’t have time to baby-sit a scientist. We’ve got a _real_ job to do here.”

The guy flinched for a second.

“I’m local, you know. I’m a McKay,” he said softly. “My grandfather owned the place out by Sateda. My dad couldn’t farm it though. By the time we got it, the land was dead. It’s just one big salt flat now. That’s what Wraith does to the land.”

“Oh,” Sheppard said,”I know that place. It’s…”

Sheppard had to drive past that place every time he went into town. It was like something out of a horror movie, dead land and dead trees and _death_ hanging in the air, like some ancient sea back to reclaim its place. The only things alive for about ten kilometres were the fucking crows. It gave him the creeps.

“Please,” the guy said, and then he looked up, and Sheppard was shocked by the guy’s eyes. Blue and weathered, and nothing he ever thought he would see in a yuppie. “It’s important. We now know that cattle spread Wraith–”

“My cattle don’t spread Wraith.”

“Frankly, Mr Sheppard, I highly doubt that. And you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.”

Sheppard bristled. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but I had to watch Aiden Ford slaughter all of his stock three months ago. There is no way I’m going to let you do that to–to my animals, or to me.”

“That’s why it’s so important that I come on the road with you. There’s something we’re missing about Wraith–I’m very close to a breakthrough, but I need to observe the cattle moving through new ecosystems.” McKay rubbed his nose. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but that’s the only reason you’re being allowed to drive your cattle down Route 66 this year at all.”

Sheppard raised an eyebrow. McKay stared back evenly.

“It’s like I said. Either I’m coming with you, or you don’t go at all.”

Sheppard narrowed his eyes and swung a leg over to straddle his motorbike. He revved the bike up.

“Well,” he said, raising his voice over the roar. “I guess I don’t have a choice then.”

***

A drover’s almost paternalistic concern for the welfare of the cattle under his charge is legendary.

***

Rodney strips off his muddy and ruined clothes before he remembers his Powerbook–all the data!–and starts panicking again.

“Sheppard!” he yells. “Are you still there?”

The caravan door swings open and Rodney jumps in surprise, covering his chest reflexively, glad he’s still wearing his shorts until he remembers that he was lying in a puddle of pee and mud. Sheppard stands in the doorway, silhouetted, so that Rodney can’t make out his face, but can still that tell he’s smirking. 

“What’s up?” Sheppard drawls, then double-takes. He moves forward quickly to grip Rodney’s shoulder. “Jesus, you’re covered in bruises.” Sheppard turns Rodney around and examines him, making disapproving noises. 

Rodney shrugs Sheppard’s hands off impatiently. “That’s not important. I need you to look and see if any of my stuff survived–my laptop and my research notes.”

Sheppard reaches out and presses the skin over Rodney’s kidneys. Rodney flinches away from Sheppard’s warm hands. “Please stop,” he says, shivering. “I’m–I’m very sore, I almost died, I don’t need you poking my bruises.”

“I’m checking for internal bleeding,” Sheppard says, and slides his hand further around, to the base of Rodney’s ribcage.

“You’re a doctor now?” Rodney snaps, squirming against Sheppard’s fingers. 

“No, McKay, I work with cattle, I see cracked ribs and bruises all the time. Take a deep breath for me.” Rodney narrows his eyes and Sheppard makes a c’mon, c’mon motion with his head. Scowling, Rodney inhales and counts to three.

“Looks like you’re okay,” Sheppard says, actually sounding relieved and the light concern in Sheppard’s voice, that just does it. To his fury, Rodney feels tears stinging his eyes and he clenches his fists.

“I am not okay!” he spits out. “I’ve been trampled on by cattle, my head is bleeding, I–I _wet my pants_. None of which counts for anything if all my work has been destroyed.” Rodney feels himself start to hyperventilate.

Sheppard grasps Rodney’s shoulders. “Hey,” he says sounding awkward, “Hey now. You’re okay.”

“I am not okay,” Rodney repeats, but he relaxes into Sheppard. Sheppard lets him lean there for a moment, which Rodney really appreciates; Sheppard is warm and strong and being inexplicably nice. Sheppard rubs his hands up and down Rodney’s arms, smoothing away the goose-bumps of Rodney’s chilled skin. Rodney heaves a couple of deep breaths, not failing to notice that Sheppard smells really good.

“Right,” Sheppard says, stepping back and touching the cut over Rodney’s eye gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Sheppard gets a flannel and a bucket of warm water. He wipes Rodney down slowly with careful strokes over all Rodney’s bruises. “Christ,” Sheppard says, “You really _were_ almost killed, weren’t you.”

Rodney looks down to see that Sheppard has gone thin-lipped and frowning. Rodney shivers, and Sheppard eases down his shorts, and washes him so matter-of-factly that Rodney can’t even feel embarrassed. He sways forward into Sheppard and Sheppard rinses out the flannel and wipes his forehead. Rodney feels confused, and sore, and battered almost as badly by Sheppard’s soft touches as he felt by the stampeding cattle the night before. He says; “Quit being so nice, you’re making feel like I’m at my own funeral,” but he doesn’t quite hit the tone he was aiming for–it comes out all breathy and pleading. 

Sheppard grins ever so slowly at that, and his fingers brush Rodney’s stomach, a light touch that makes Rodney hunch his hips forward, wordlessly seeking. But the fingers withdraw. 

“I’d better tape up that rib,” Sheppard says, and pulls away. Rodney opens and closes his mouth searching for something to say but by the time he feels like he’s regained the power of speech, Sheppard has turned back with tape and scissors. Rodney submits to the taping mutely, trying not to quiver every time Sheppard’s skin brushes against his.

Sheppard covers the cut over his eye with a band-aid and then rummages in one of the cupboards, finally handing Rodney a pile of clean clothes.

“I’ll go and search for your stuff,” Sheppard says, looking at him with a rueful expression. He turns to go. The door slams behind him. 

Rodney stumbles back to the bench and sits down with a thump, panting. He didn’t even _know_ , or _think_ –sure, he’s noticed that Sheppard is incredibly hot in a kind of wiry, man-of-the-land way, but Rodney had long ago stopped thinking of hot guys as _for him_.

***

“Mechanised mustering and transportation might be a time saver. But you have to wonder about the real cost. Droving kept stock in good condition, working them at walking pace.”

***

After that first meeting, it was two weeks before Sheppard saw McKay again; he told Bates that they were going to have a scientist from the Department of the Environment travelling with them and to make sure that he didn’t slow them down. Bates had replied “I’ll see that he keeps up” and grinned ferally, and that was that. Sheppard rode ahead of the mob for those two weeks, trying to organise grain feeds where necessary, finding water, checking in with farmers. It wasn’t until his motorbike packed it in again that he phoned Ronon to come and pick him up.

The ute arrived an hour later, peeling off the road in a cloud of dust. Sheppard shaded his eyes, surprised to see that Ronon wasn’t driving. 

“McKay,” he said, leaning through the open window. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Uh.” McKay looked tired and pissed off. His nose was peeling. His hair was messy. “You’ve got a cow trying to deliver a transverse breech and Teyla and Ronon got into a big thing about whether it should be shot or whether Bates should stay behind with it and neither of them would listen when I said I could help, so I decided to take the easy route and come pick you up. So here I am. And my arse is totally numb and I can’t believe you don’t have air conditioning in this pitiful excuse for a vehicle.”

“I’m surprised to see you driving the ute,” Sheppard said, slightly taken aback and kind of turned on by the tirade. He opened the door for McKay to step out. “Actually, I’d forgotten all about you.”

“Yes, thank you, that’s great to know,” McKay bristled. He unclipped his seat-belt and kind of half-slid out of the driver’s seat. “Jesus, my legs have fallen asleep.”

Sheppard watched, amused, as McKay shook his legs out and cracked his neck. McKay actually looked much more like a stockman and less like a wanker than the last time they’d met–the sandals had been swapped for boots, the trousers were now worn jeans. McKay had also lost the tie and Sheppard kind of liked the way McKay’s t-shirt clung. His arms looked really nice.

“Help me get the bike up,” Sheppard said, throwing his swag into the back. McKay glanced at him as if to say ‘who, me?’ but moved around to pull the pins from the ute flap. His hands were long-fingered, swift and capable. “You’re pretty used to farm work, aren’t you?” Sheppard asked, wrangling the motorbike into position. McKay jumped onto the ute and guided the front wheel up.

“Ooph,” he said, as he pulled. Sheppard watched him take the whole weight of the bike easily, biceps bunching where the sleeves of his t-shirt ended. Sheppard was intrigued by those arms. “I am an _agricultural_ scientist, you know.” Sheppard grabbed a length of rope from the cab and threw it up to him.

“No, actually I didn’t know.” McKay passed the rope around the bike and fed it to Sheppard. He looped it securely through the grille of the ute and tied it off. “I thought you were a biochemist or a microbiologist or something.”

McKay stared blankly down at him. He looked funny from this angle; Sheppard could see up his nose. “Right, well. I am, I do both, but in the context of agriculture.” McKay said, after a minute. “Okay, you obviously didn’t read anything the Department sent you, I should have known.”

Sheppard climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for McKay to scramble in. “I know your radical theory that there’s some microbiological catalyst for Wraith spores activating every decade or so.”

“Wait,” McKay said, buckling his seat-belt and twisting around to look intently at him. “Did you read the reports or not?”

“I might have skimmed them,” Sheppard smirked, and pulled out onto the road. 

“Did you understand them?” McKay sounded sceptical. He paused, and then continued more hesitantly. “Because if you did, I could really use your help.”

“My help?” Now it was Sheppard’s turn to sound sceptical. 

“Sure,” McKay said. “Actually, I was kind of counting on it. But then you’ve been gone these past two weeks and I didn’t know if you’d ever be around and Bates is next to useless, he doesn’t understand a word I’m saying, and won’t let me stop to take the samples I need. I mean, the man practically forbids me to take bathroom breaks, let alone collect specimens.”

“I told him to make sure you kept up,” Sheppard admitted, taking his eyes off the road to glance at McKay, who had pulled a sandwich from somewhere.

“Right,” McKay said with his mouth full. “You know, I thought as much. But my work is actually important–it’s been 18 years since the last major outbreak of Wraith so we are due any day now. We are _so_ overdue.”

Sheppard felt his throat tighten. “Yeah,” he said, remembering the thick haze of smoke that had hung over Aiden Ford’s place for days and days, the acrid, fusty smell of it, the black emptiness of Aiden’s eyes when he told Sheppard that the order to destroy had been given. “The government seems to be pretty jumpy.”

“It’s the drought.” McKay had started on a second sandwich. “Historically, the last time Pegasus had a Wraith outbreak following a severe drought, 25% of our arable land became salt flats or desert. And we’ve never been able to reclaim that land. Our overall exports dropped by a correlating margin and our economy and foreign debt have never recovered.” 

“How is Wraith connected to the drought?” Sheppard looked out at the dry, cracked fields they were passing. He had lived and breathed the drought for the last five years, the chalky-dusty smell of it even getting into his dreams.

“If I knew that, I’d be a millionaire.” McKay paused to drink from a canteen and Sheppard realised how thirsty he was.

“Do you have another one of those?” he asked, glancing at McKay, feeling parched at the sight of McKay’s swift swallowing, the easy movement of McKay’s throat.

“What?” McKay asked. “Water? No, but you can have this, I’m finished now.” McKay carefully wiped the spot his lips had touched with the hem of his shirt. Sheppard snorted at his prissiness.

“Thanks,” he said, and drank. McKay dug into a bag at his feet and produced a couple of oranges. 

“Want one?” McKay asked, pulling out a pocket knife as well. “I can peel it for you.” Sheppard nodded and kept drinking until the canteen was empty. He passed it back to McKay, who juggled knife and canteen and half-peeled orange for a minute before dropping the orange. McKay dove under the seat to retrieve it and Sheppard laughed out loud.

McKay’s t-shirt pulled up at the back to show off a bright-pink strip of sunburn above the waist-band of his pants. “I think it’s rolled between your feet,” he heard McKay say, “Watch out.” And then McKay was burrowing under his legs and touching his ankles and calves and Sheppard froze, feeling himself get hard. “Got it!” McKay said and sat up, red-faced and triumphant. “But. Um, it’s kind of linty.”

“Chuck it out the window,” Sheppard said, carefully relaxing back into his seat by sheer force of will. He glanced sideways at McKay, who was turning the orange over in his hands. 

“Three second rule?” McKay asked, sounding hopeful. 

“The dogs usually sleep in here,” Sheppard said. “We have to worm them every month.”

The look on McKay’s face was priceless. The orange sailed out the window in a clean arc and McKay scrubbed his fingers frantically on his pants. Sheppard snickered and decided he really liked teasing McKay.

“I thought you were an agricultural scientist?” Sheppard grinned. “Doesn’t that usually mean rumen studies? And don’t rumen studies usually mean your hand up the cow’s–” 

“I wear _gloves_ ,” McKay grumbled. “Anyway, that’s what work experience kids are for. Although, you know, I always wanted to be a physicist.”

“No rumens?” Sheppard glanced at McKay, who looked kind of wistful.

“Something like that,” McKay answered. “Something like that.”

***

“Atlantis is losing far too much outback history. Aspects of droving, shearing, settling and the intricate indigenous knowledge of our plants, animals, soils and climates are almost forgotten.”

***

The caravan door swings open again and this time Sheppard is carrying Rodney’s backpack. Rodney sets his cup of tea down and reaches for it, a soft “Oh,” dying on his lips. The backpack doesn’t even look muddy. He unzips it quickly and pulls his notepads out; they are fine. The laptop, thank the gods of Apple and STM, is also fine. Rodney hugs it to his chest and doesn’t care that even that movement hurts. Sheppard is watching him, grinning, and Rodney just feels completely, absurdly grateful. 

“Thank you,” he starts to say, and he means, for the clean clothes and underwear, for the tape on his ribs and the band-aid above his eye, but then Sheppard’s phone rings and he goes outside to answer it. Rodney opens his laptop and wakes it from sleep, just to check that everything is okay. 

The laptop blinks to life, no problems, and Rodney means to glance only briefly at his calculations–but then suddenly he’s starving and needs to pee desperately and he realises that he’s been working for three hours. His head throbs like it’s about to explode and everything _hurts_. He looks around to see a canteen of water, a slice of fruitcake and a couple of pills waiting for him on the counter. Must have been Sheppard, he thinks, and swallows them gratefully. He’s actually starting to like the pre-packaged fruitcake that seems to be so popular out on the road. It’s dark and wodgy and very scarce on actual _fruit_ but it’s definitely a step above dry tea biscuits.

There’s been something… niggling at the edges of Rodney’s brain for some time now, almost a decade. His thesis research for his first PhD wasn’t even in the same field as current Wraith investigations originally, but one year in, he was tapped on the shoulder for government funding. Obviously someone saw something in his work that Rodney hadn’t at the time (which bothered him more than a little). Privately, Rodney had thought at first that the Department was simply throwing money at any even remotely related avenue of Wraith study. 

But then Rodney kept researching and started publishing, and it became very clear that the spread of Wraith was related to cattle movement. Only two years into his doctorate, Rodney was suddenly being called in to consult on matters of government policy and quarantine. It had all moved so _fast_ , in the beginning. But things seem to have stalled now.

The longer he researched the more insistent the niggling became, until it is so strong on days like today that Rodney wants to physically remove his brain from his head. He is obviously missing something, and even more obviously some part of him knows what he is missing. He just wishes the subconscious part that knows could inform the conscious part that _doesn’t_. He’s supposed to be a genius, for christ’s sake.

He’s leaning into the wall of the caravan, softly smacking his head against it, when Sheppard returns, bearing a thermos and a bunch of flowers. Rodney straightens up in surprise. “Are those for–” he starts, in disbelief. “No, no, I’m obviously going crazy. You wouldn’t bring me _flowers_. Even if I was almost killed by your cows.”

“Cattle, not cows,” Sheppard corrects, and lays the flowers on the table next to him. “But you’re not crazy, I did bring you flowers. Though they aren’t a romantic gesture, I’m afraid.”

Sheppard smiles widely and Rodney is almost blinded. Sheppard is ridiculously good-looking–Rodney _has_ noticed, not being _blind_ –and his hair is damp from the rain. His skin looks clean and fresh. Rodney blinks.

“Not a romantic gesture?” he fingers the yellow petals.

“They’re called ten-year-lilies,” Sheppard says. “Good for all that ails you. Teyla says she’ll use them to make you some tea that will help your headache.”

“Ten-year-lilies,” Rodney repeats, and his brain pounds fiercely.

“They bloomed in with the first rain–you should go and look at them, I’ve never seen so many in my life. They’re actually a weed, but the flowers are useful.” 

“Ten-year-lilies,” Rodney repeats again, stupidly. 

“Yes–are you okay?” Sheppard reaches out to feel Rodney’s forehead with the back of his hand. “If you want, I can get Teyla to make the tea now. My mum used to make it all the time when we were kids, but we haven’t had even dried petals for a long time.”

“Let me guess,” Rodney says thickly, as his brain pounds and pounds and pounds. “Not for eighteen years or so.”

“Well,” Sheppard frowns, and Rodney knows that Sheppard is smart enough to see where this is going. “I remember them last blooming when I was in year ten, which would make me 15 . And I’m 33 now. Oh god.”

“Oh god,” Rodney feels like he can’t breathe. “And they always bloom best after a drought.”

Sheppard nods silently at Rodney and his eyes are wide. “So my mother always said.”

They lock eyes, and suddenly Rodney is trembling all over. Sheppard reaches out and grabs his hands. 

“Explain this to me, Rodney,” Sheppard stumbles over his words and Rodney’s name. “Tell me I’m not thinking crazy thoughts here.”

“You’re not,” Rodney can’t tear his eyes away from Sheppard’s. Sheppard is breathing quickly and his pupils are dilated and Rodney can hardly speak, the air is so thick. “Or maybe you are, I don’t know. It’s not the damn lilies themselves–it must be your fucking cattle eating them. It might alter the pH of their rumineal processes, or, or–maybe a protein or an enzyme would be released, which…” 

Rodney breaks off because Sheppard is squeezing his hands painfully hard and he can’t breath with the dizzying _nearness_ of Sheppard, of Sheppard this intense and this close to him. “You read my paper, you know my theory. When microbiological conditions reach a certain, until now irreproducible state, the casing on Wraith spores is cracked and the fungus is released into the atmosphere–where it kills every green thing it touches. Where it poisons the ground until all that is left is dust. Where it turns living land into a dead, empty shell.”

Rodney’s voice breaks and he thinks of his father drinking himself to death, following the land into total dissolution. Rodney thinks of all the trees dying, of the water table rising, of the hideous reclamation of the earth by salt. He feels turned to salt himself, like a stiff breeze would blow him away. 

But Sheppard is still gripping his hands.

***

Cows dropping calves were a difficulty. Drovers had to kill the calves because the babies could not keep up with the herd. “I always hated to kill the innocent things, but as they were never counted in on the sale of cattle the loss of them was nothing financially.”

***

The drive back was surprisingly pleasant. The cab of the ute smelled clean and tangy, once McKay got around to peeling the second orange. And McKay wasn’t as bad as he’d been expecting–after two weeks of mostly his own company, Sheppard didn’t really mind listening to McKay hum and talk about microbiology and the efficiency of diesel engines. Actually, he was quite interested in the microbiology and the engines, and the humming didn’t actively bother him. 

When they pulled up to the mob, though, Sheppard saw McKay visibly tense, like he was expecting something nasty to happen.

“Something wrong?” he asked casually, letting the motor idle. 

“I could have helped,” McKay said, and his lower jaw was set stiffly. “And I bet now they’ve shot that poor cow, and it should have been _easy_.”

Sheppard looked at him doubtfully. “You know, Ronon and Teyla have been working with stock pretty much their whole lives.”

“I know!” McKay was practically wringing his hands, and Sheppard wondered if he was upset about the cow, or upset about being brushed aside. “They told me in great detail how superior their knowledge of calving was and where exactly I should shove my fancy degree.”

“Look,” Sheppard cut the engine. “If the cow is still labouring, you can have a go, okay?”

“What,” McKay’s chin jerked upwards. “Just because you say so?”

“Yes, just because I say so.” Sheppard jumped out of the ute. “Come on, let’s go and see.”

The cow was still labouring, and she was in a pretty bad way. There were flecks of foam around her mouth and her eyes were rolling back in her head. She was dark with perspiration. Sheppard was surprised that someone hadn’t put her out of her misery–he was surprised and pretty pissed that she’d been left alone. McKay knelt next to her, muttering under his breath. He rolled up his sleeves.

“Pass me that rope, will you?” he pointed. He was busily covering his hand with some kind of slick gel. 

“You just carry that around with you?” Sheppard asked in disbelief. McKay barked out a laugh.

“It’s like you said, I’m an agricultural scientist. And there’s no work experience kid around to foist the job on.”

“No glove, either,” Sheppard remarked, as McKay slid his hand into the cow, taking the rope with him. 

“Yes, clearly I’ll be bleaching my hand once I’m done,” McKay panted, manoeuvring something deep inside the cow. 

“We’ve got some Lysol in the caravan.” 

“Ha!” It was more of a gasp than a laugh. McKay slowly withdrew his arm, a loop of the rope clenched in his fist. 

“Come here, would you?” McKay gestured for Sheppard kneel next to him. “Press down there, as hard as you can, use your body weight.” McKay pointed with his non-sticky hand, indicating a spot low on the cow’s distended abdomen. 

“It’s really just a simple matter of physics,” McKay said, as Sheppard moved into place.

“I thought you wanted to become a physicist to _avoid_ cows’ arses.” 

McKay rolled his eyes. “Are you pushing yet?”

Sheppard pushed and leant and felt something move inside the cow. McKay strained on the rope for second, and then with the next contraction a dark mass slithered out.

“Look,” McKay breathed triumphantly, smile brilliant. But then Sheppard looked down, and the dark shape wasn’t moving. “Oh,” McKay said, in a much softer voice, and his smile folded in on itself and became suddenly, horribly miserable. Sheppard wanted to reach for him. 

“Oh,” McKay said again, “Damn it all to _hell_.”

McKay angrily scrubbed his arm down with straw and stomped off. Sheppard ran his hand over the heaving sides of the exhausted mother and looked at the still, silent calf.

“Yeah,” he said, to himself. “Damn it all to hell.”

***

“The drover knew where each beast would walk in the mob or stand during night camp–on the right flank, for instance, at the lead, or down the back on the left.”

***

It only takes a minute for realisation to hit Sheppard, Rodney can see the actual second full comprehension dawns. The fierce light in Sheppard’s eyes goes out, and he drops Rodney’s hands like they are burning him.

“This means they’ll want wholesale slaughter,” Sheppard says, like it’s choking him. “No cattle, no Wraith, isn’t that right, Rodney? No mere 5/8ths culling this time.”

Rodney can’t say anything, because he knows, he _knows_ that slaughter is going to be the most efficient way to eradicate Wraith. 

He says: “I will try–” but Sheppard doesn’t even stay to hear the rest of the sentence, just slams out of the caravan and leaves Rodney behind.

The rest of the day passes in a blur. As soon as Ronon and Teyla get back from chasing down the stragglers from the stampede, Rodney (with Sheppard standing behind him silently, arms tightly crossed) asks them to help him collect samples. He makes Bates go and pick up all the carcasses of the animals that had to be shot. Hopefully, it’ll save having to slaughter too many more. 

Rodney spends an hour on the phone, explaining tersely that he needs assistance–more people, vehicles, some way to transport the carcasses back to the lab. He tells his supervisor to call in Zelenka and Grodin and anybody who’s ever worked with _Bulbine bulbosa deciperennialis_. He mentally plans out the next six months–it’s like trying to plan a war. There is _so much_ testing to be done; he doesn’t even know if his hypothesis is correct, but it feels correct, down in his stomach and in the lizard part of his brain, and his whole body aches with certainty.

Finally, it is night time and there’s nothing else that can be done except wait. Rodney goes to find Sheppard.

Sheppard is straddling one of the motorbikes, scowling up at the stars. His Levis are pulled tightly over his groin. Rodney’s throat closes up, and he carefully tucks his hands behind his back to stop himself from reaching out and touching. Sheppard’s hair looks soft and his t-shirt looks soft, but everything about his posture is stiff and spiky. 

“Don’t,” Sheppard says, when Rodney opens his mouth to speak. “I can’t hear it right now.”

“I wasn’t going to…” Rodney trails off as he sees Sheppard clench his fists. The knuckles gleam white in the moonlight. “John. I have no choice.”

“You think you have no choice–you know what I’m thinking about, right now?” Sheppard’s voice is low and bitter. “I’m thinking of the stench that 2000 head of cattle make when they are burning. I’m thinking about really having no choices.”

“John,” Rodney says, struggling for words. “You know I never intended to–”

“Your intentions count for _shit_ , McKay. History bears this point out. I have been there, I have lit the fires myself.”

“I will try–,” Rodney begins, and then stops, because recommending quarantine and slaughter is not even a decision he needs to weigh, because Wraith will kill _everything_ given the chance. 

“Yeah, McKay. You try.” 

Rodney takes a step back, and just _looks_ at Sheppard, at the tense line of his back. “I’ll be leaving in the morning,” he says, but Sheppard doesn’t even twitch. 

***

“Those old fellas, they had to just take it as it comes. They were pretty hardy souls. A packhorse with swag and tucker on the side and away they went, with very few stops.”

***

They were camped out near enough to a friendly farm that Sheppard took McKay to go and ask for a shower. He’d torn strips off Ronon and Teyla for leaving the cow to labour–he’d had to shoot her when it was clear that her uterus was ruptured. Ronon said that the police had come around talking about poachers and they’d ridden out to check, but Sheppard was still pissed. Life was brutal enough for his poor skinny beasts without adding in a god-awful labour. So the atmosphere in camp was strained and surly and Sheppard was glad to get away.

McKay cheered up after a shower, and some of the farmer’s wife’s scones with jam. Sheppard felt cheered himself. It was nice to be freshly shaved and washed, and to drink coffee and listen to intelligent conversation. Maria had a PhD in biochemistry, and she was chatting intently with McKay. Sheppard suspected they might be playing footsie under the table. 

Sheppard was starting to think McKay was kind of _attractive_ , in a sunburned-face, golden-skinned kind of way. He really liked McKay’s arms and the width of McKay’s shoulders. It gave him a kind of squirmy feeling, seeing McKay’s stiff nipples through his shirt. Sheppard grinned and sat back to enjoy watching McKay argue with Maria. 

Suddenly Maria sat up perfectly straight and said: “Oh my god, you’re Doctor Rodney McKay.” 

McKay smiled and said, “Well, yes of course.” 

Maria stood up abruptly. “Please leave my house,” she had gone completely white. “God, I can’t believe you. You have some balls, coming here.” 

“What?” Sheppard stood up too. McKay had flushed a deep red, and had placed his half-eaten scone back on the plate. Sheppard felt oddly protective. Maria whirled to face him.

“Don’t you know who this is?” she hissed. “He’s responsible for the orders to destroy–he’s the man who recommended that 5/8ths of the district stock be obliterated.” 

“McKay?” Sheppard asked, confused. “Is that true?”

“We are trying to fight Wraith,” McKay turned to him, eyes wide and pleading. “You have to understand that, that, look. The next Wraith outbreak, we’re projecting it will devastate _fifty percent_ of our vegetation. At those levels, you have total catastrophic system failure. Weather patterns change, whole species become extinct. We’re looking at _famine_. And we’ve never been able to reclaim land affected by Wraith. Nothing grows! Ever again!”

Maria jabbed a finger at McKay. “So _you_ thought that you’d just pre-emptively destroy people then. My sister’s husband killed himself, did you know that? Shot himself in the head, just like you people made him shoot his stock.”

Sheppard put his body between Maria and McKay. “Maria,” he said. “Thank you for your hospitality. We’re going to leave now. Give my regards to Simmo.” 

He hustled McKay back to the ute, starting the engine and getting back onto the road before he spoke.

“Was it necessary?” he asked, trying to make some sense out of it. McKay scrubbed his face with his hands.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” McKay sounded strained. “I was only twenty-four, you have to understand, when the government picked up my work and asked me to make recommendations. And I had no concrete data–none!–except that I had proven that cattle spread Wraith, and that areas with a very low population density of cattle per square kilometre of land had been mostly unaffected.”

“Very low population density of cattle?” Sheppard asked. 

“Yes–about 5/8ths less than what your district had stocked. But those recommendations–they were old, and so very, very preliminary and I hadn’t heard anything more about them until they put the slaughter policy in place.”

“This year.”

“Yes, this year, which you’ll note is _ten years_ after I made them. I tried to argue, but they wouldn’t listen. And when they passed the Act, my name was on it.” McKay exhaled loudly. 

“Right,” Sheppard said, and exhaled himself. McKay was vibrating nervously. Sheppard felt like a hamster on a wheel–his loyalties were all confused. He concentrated on the road. “Right,” he repeated. “I’ll try not to hold it against you.”

***

The droving game–the era of boss drovers on horseback–is over, and there is little historical record of it.

***

The hire car is totally inadequate for the trip to Atlantis, but doesn’t matter because Rodney drives slowly anyway, not wanting to get there too soon. The district has transformed with all the rain in the last year; it is summer, and harvest, and there are actually crops in the field. It makes Rodney’s stomach tighten. He pulls up at the truck stop to buy a drink and to use the toilet and has to convince himself all over again that this is a good idea. The locals look on disinterestedly as he paces back and forth, muttering to himself. 

There is no sane reason for him to be out here, except that he needs to scrub himself clean after eight months in the lab and four months wrestling with bureaucracy. He kept falling asleep in front of his computer, dreaming of stampedes and pyres of burning cattle and of John Sheppard walking ahead of him and refusing to turn around. It’s become worse, until he can barely taste his food over the taste of ashes.

The work is finished, it’s _done_ , the news goes live tomorrow, journals around the world will be publishing simultaneously, parliament will be called to session. But Rodney has fled from the city and the politicians and the journalists–Rodney is in a cheap hire car heading for Atlantis.

He shakes himself all over like he’s shaking off a ghost, gets back in his car, and keeps driving.

It is late afternoon when he reaches the farm. He finds Teyla in one of the byres, and greets her cautiously.

“Dr McKay,” she says, formally. “I did not expect to see you again.”

“I didn’t expect to be here again,” Rodney replies, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “Do you know where I can find–?”

“He’s working on one of the motorcycles,” Teyla points towards the machinery shed.

“Right. Thank you,” Rodney says, and turns to go. “And, uh, it was nice to see you again.”

Teyla inclines her head. Rodney takes a deep breath and starts walking. It seems like a very long way, and he can’t stop rehearsing what he’s going to say. 

Rodney’s totally unprepared for the sight of Sheppard, shirtless and sweaty and streaked with grease. His eyes ache from the glare, from the sun catching on the chrome of the bike, from the fierce light that seems to surround Sheppard. 

Rodney clears his throat. “Let me guess,” he says. “It’s the exhaust.” Sheppard’s head swivels toward him quickly, and Rodney feels pinned by Sheppard’s gaze. 

“McKay,” Sheppard says and the wariness in his voice makes McKay want to babble. “Long time no see.” 

Rodney crouches down next to Sheppard and fingers the dismantled muffler. “You’re always having problems with these bikes. Look, you’re rusted right through, here and here. Fish oil would prevent that.”

“What are you doing here?” Sheppard says, sounding strained.

“I don’t know how your bikes rust so quickly anyway. It’s not like you have damp sea-breezes out here. Maybe you’re getting a lot of condensation in the mornings–where do you store the bikes? If you spent a bit more money you could have these parts made of stainless steel and then you wouldn’t have rust problems at all–”

Rodney can feel himself babbling and he can’t even bring himself to look at Sheppard to see how he is reacting. He fiddles with the fuel tank cap. He can see pieces of Sheppard out of the corner of his eye–Sheppard’s knee, showing through a hole in his jeans, Sheppard’s brown, sun-tanned hand. Rodney looks at his own hands. They are pale-white, ghostly from days and nights and weeks spent without ever seeing the sun, from eight months spent deep in the bowels of his lab. The calluses he earned on his droving adventure last year are long gone, sloughed away like they were never there.

“McKay,” Sheppard cuts across his babbling. “You didn’t come all this way to lecture me on motorcycle maintenance.”

Rodney swallows and turns his head to meet Sheppard’s eyes. “I came to tell you,” he says nervously, “that. We figured out how to stop Wraith. And it doesn’t involve slaughter, or culling or quarantine.” 

Sheppard doesn’t blink. “ _You_ figured out how to stop Wraith.”

“Yes,” Rodney says, and doesn’t know how to say the rest, doesn’t know how to say, _“It took two weeks to prove my theory, four months of fighting the government to stop them legislating wholesale cattle slaughter and eight months of hard research to find a way to reverse the catalytic effect of_ B. bulbosa _. But I never stopped trying.”_

Sheppard looks at him for a moment, and then Sheppard’s whole face turns into this joyous smile that is the most beautiful thing Rodney has ever seen. Rodney’s stomach clenches uncomfortably. 

“Okay,” Sheppard says, “Okay.” He passes his hand over his eyes, and Rodney can see that it’s trembling just slightly. “Christ. That’s good news, Rodney.”

Rodney nods, unsure of what to do next. Sheppard is still smiling, but he’s also watching Rodney intently.

“And you came all the way here to tell me that?” Sheppard asks, and Rodney flinches. 

“I just wanted,” Rodney says, but can’t finish.

“ _Rodney_ ,” Sheppard says, “I tried to get in touch with you, but nobody seemed to have any of your numbers. And I haven’t heard from you in a _year_.” 

A little shock runs through Rodney. He says: “I didn’t know if you would want to–”

“Of course I wanted to,” Sheppard says, sounding frustrated. “I thought you’d know that.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” Rodney gives the fuel cap a vicious twist. “I’m not a mind-reader–you said you wouldn’t hold my job against me, and then you suddenly went and decided that I, personally, was going to be responsible for the death of all your fucking cows–who did, by the way, in fact break my rib when they stampeded over me.”

Sheppard makes an inarticulate noise, but Rodney has too much momentum to stop and hear him out. “And you know, it hasn’t been peachy for me this last year–always waking up screaming from nightmares where you decided to follow your cattle into _death_ and shoot yourself in the head, because, because I’d _failed_ even though I had tried my very hardest to find a non-slaughter solution.”

Sheppard is grinning now, and he’s reaching out for Rodney, but Rodney keeps him at arm’s length. “I had to meet with the President and with diplomats from other countries and explain exactly why slaughter wasn’t our best line of defence against Wraith. I had to lie to the President and find evidence that cattle were actually a necessary part of our ecosystem–when they definitely are _not_ –all because I couldn’t say, “I promised John Sheppard that _I would try_.”

“Rodney,” Sheppard says, and settles his hands firmly on Rodney’s waist. “You did it. You saved the day. You really are a genius.”

“Fine,” Rodney says, and then: “ _Good,_ ” as Sheppard nudges a knee between his thighs, and then _“God!”_ as Sheppard leans forward and kisses him.

Rodney topples over backwards, of course, but he doesn’t really mind, because he has shirtless, greasy Sheppard on top of him, kissing him and rubbing against him. Rodney groans and open his mouth and Sheppard kisses him with strong, sure strokes of his tongue. Rodney spreads his hands out flat against Sheppard’s back and soaks in the heat of Sheppard’s skin. 

Sheppard breaks off, panting, and just looks down at him like he’s something wonderful. Rodney almost can’t bear it, closes his eyes against it, and then Sheppard’s lips brush against his eyelids and he trembles all over and thrusts his hips up and whimpers.

He’s hard, he is _so_ hard, he’s been hard and aching for a _year_. When Sheppard grinds down, it’s the best thing he has ever felt. He arches helplessly and slides his hands over and over Sheppard’s back. Sheppard is panting roughly into his neck, rubbing himself off intently and deliberately against Rodney’s thigh. Rodney groans and tries to slide his hands into Sheppard’s jeans. “Wait, wait,” Sheppard says, and stands. Rodney shades his eyes against the afternoon sun and looks up at Sheppard standing over him, shucking his jeans and underwear. He groans again and makes a little helpless motion with his hips. Sheppard grins down at him and kicks his jeans into a corner.

Sheppard pads, naked, to the door of the shed and hauls it closed. He fastens a lock. The shed is darker now, striped with sunbeams. Rodney lies on the dusty floor, sweaty and panting, waiting for Sheppard to come back.

Sheppard kneels next to him and plucks at his shirt. “You didn’t think to take this off?” Rodney raises his arms and lets Sheppard peel the shirt from him. Sheppard rolls it up into a ball and pushes it under Rodney’s neck, then he lies down and covers Rodney’s body with his own. Rodney skims his fingertips over Sheppard’s arms. “Now your pants,” Sheppard says, moving to work on Rodney’s belt. Rodney lifts up and Sheppard slides his pants down, and mouths at Rodney’s cock.

“Oh my god, John,” Rodney moans, covering his eyes with his arm. “Please.” 

Sheppard sits up and grips Rodney’s cock firmly in his fist and starts a steady up-and-down slide. Rodney’s back arches and his spine fizzes and his vision actually _shorts out_ for a second. Through the fuzzy haze of his orgasm, Rodney can see Sheppard looking inordinately self-satisfied. “ _Mmph,_ ” he says, meaning, _Don’t feel too impressed with yourself, I’m really pretty easy._

Sheppard grins and pushes one of Rodney’s knees back–Rodney didn’t know he was this flexible, it’s quite astonishing what a decent orgasm can reveal–and Rodney’s head slips off the shirt-pillow with a thud. 

“Okay?” Sheppard asks, scooping up some of the warm mess from Rodney’s stomach and pressing inside quickly and capably. Rodney lets out a long, low, quivering moan in reply that makes Sheppard laugh. Rodney doesn’t mind, though, because Sheppard has two fingers inside him and he’s sliding them steadily back and forth and tiny silver aftershocks are ripping through Rodney’s very cells. It feels like electrical overload, like being dissolved and put back together again in a blast of white noise. 

His brain is completely fried. He barely notices when Sheppard moves forward and thrusts into him; Rodney just attempts to keep breathing and not disintegrate into the atmosphere. Sheppard makes short huffing sounds as he thrusts, and Rodney tightens around him, as hard as he can. 

Sheppard only makes a drawn out kind of “ _Oh,_ ” and then he collapses on top of Rodney in a madly-panting, sweaty pile. Rodney clutches him tight and breathes and breathes until some oxygen finally reaches his brain.

“Christ,” Sheppard mutters, and kisses his shoulder, rolling off. “Who knew?” Sheppard reaches out and laces Rodney’s fingers with his. “You’re incredible.”

Rodney doesn’t know whether to feel insulted or pleased; frankly he’s too tired to do either, so he settles for placing slow, careful kisses on any part of Sheppard he can reach. 

“What made you come back?” Sheppard asks, his worn-out-by-sex voice sending residual tingles through Rodney. “Why did you come back if you didn’t know I wanted you?”

Rodney snorts gently, freeing one hand to stroke Sheppard’s sweaty hair. “I knew you wanted me, I just thought your stupid cows were more important to you.” Rodney thinks of his own life’s obsession with eradicating Wraith. He’s not sure he would have given it up for anything, not even this.

“What made you change your mind?” Sheppard is running his thumb up and down Rodney’s wrist. It’s extremely distracting. 

“Rational thought,” Rodney says, blithely dismissing the year of nightmares and cold sweats and visions of Sheppard’s death by rifle. “You seemed reasonably intelligent, and I finally realised that given the choice between _me_ and _cows_ –let’s just say, there is no choice at all.” 

Beside him, Sheppard is shaking with laughter. “Well,” Sheppard says, and rolls over to straddle him. “I guess I don’t have a choice then.”

“No choice at all,” Rodney agrees and reaches up to kiss him. 

***

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank-yous to effervescently lovely [cimorene](http://livejournal.com/~cimorene111) for the beta and to [wax](http://livejournal.com/~wax_jism) for the hand-holding. Much appreciated.
> 
> The text in small type is adapted from [on the trail of kings](http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/Bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/All/929767B032D9C813CA256AD200299333), a ninemsn bulletin supplement.


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